


Two

by magpie_03



Series: Down the mountain range of my left-side brain [1]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anxiety, Caring Josh Dun, Epilepsy, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Josh Dun & Tyler Joseph Friendship, M/M, One Shot, Seizures, epileptic!Tyler, postictal state, tonic clonic seizure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 02:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: After years of friendship, Josh has come to know Tyler. He knows the little tell tale signs when Tyler is uncomfortable, how he tuggs at his hair with that specific, odd rhythm Josh picked up immediately because he's a drummer and because he's Tyler's best friend.He knows Tyler can go quiet in at least four different ways.He knows that Tyler's favorite word is catharsis.Josh also knows when Tyler is about to have a seizure.





	Two

**Author's Note:**

> This little blib was originally part of my other epilepsy fic but it didn't fit so I cut it out. It's been sitting on my computer for a while now and I thought why not post it on here as a spin-off. Hope you all enjoy, happy reading! :)
> 
> (The title is inspired by "Two," the Twenty One Pilots song.)

After years of friendship, Josh has come to know Tyler. He knows the little tell tale signs when Tyler is uncomfortable, how he tuggs at his hair with that specific, odd rhythm Josh picked up immediately because he's a drummer and because he's Tyler's best friend.

Josh also knows when Tyler is about to have a seizure. “Josh is so much more reliable than a seizure dog – and a better drummer too,” Tyler likes to joke, trying to brush off the eerie accuracy with which Josh predicted his seizures but it's true. Josh could feel it. He could, quite literally, sense it. "There's a stomach inside my brain" Tyler likes to say but for Josh it's the other way around. For him, fear is physical, pure and not so simple. It lurches inside. It spills and spells, it transforms and transmogrifies into something bigger, something with paws and beady eyes. Anxiety is a black hole with teeth. Whenever a seizure was bound to happen Tyler became pale in a way Josh has never seen anyone else getting pale. His skin became transparent as the lights, one by one, go out.

Tyler closes his eyes. When you’re in postical state, patching your memory back together is arduous and slow. You know who you are. You know who where you are and probably even what month and year it is (and, with any luck, also the day). You know what happened. The body has its way of reminding you with a searing migraine and sore muscles that yes, it happened. _Again_. You know all this but your brain doesn’t. Memory is delicate. One wrong step and it unravels, right at the seams. Threats come loose. Colors bleed out. Memory tears as easily as paper. It takes two minutes for words to become broken, brittle, like leaves pressed between the pages of a book.

Tyler opens his eyes.

_Fluffy._

_Pink._

_Cotton candy._

_J..._

Tyler's gaze lands on Josh. He's trying to focus and Josh knows better than to put pressure on him and pester him with the usual questions. _Do you know your name? Do you know where you are?_ Tyler never knew the answer. It didn't matter. Being fully oriented after a grand mal seizure is like mastering three dimensions when you’re used to two. There's the ictal and the postictal state with nothing in between, nothing before and after those minutes where your brain short circuits. When your brain is that empty it takes real effort to glue the skin and bones of your memory back together.

_J... i..._

Tyler mouths words, smaking and licking his lips.

Josh smiles in response. He doesn't let it show but he's been waiting for this moment. The relief he experiences when the seizures end and Tyler comes back is physical, like taking a deep breath after you've been under water for too long and your lungs are beginning to hurt. He'll never forget when Tyler came out of a seizure, a long one, a bad one. Tyler's epilepsy has been an unwelcome guest for so long that they've reverted to measure seizures on a scale between "normal" and "bad" in an attempt to integrate the epilepsy into their lives and, even if they couldn't keep it out entirely, keep it at arm's length. The moment Tyler spotted Josh he blurted out "I'm happy to be alive" with brief and boyant lucidity. In that moment, Josh understood. Tyler wasn't broken. He's traversing the horrid black emptiness of amnesia with bones that glow in the dark. He survived, he's still alive. His life is a life.

"Jishwa."

“Hey, Tyler. Welcome back.”

Josh talks to Tyler in postictal state like he always does. He hated the tone Tyler's parents, paramedics, and doctors used, talking down to Tyler like he's a five year old. He knew Tyler hated it, too.

“Wha-happn?”

“You had a grand mal seizure. You just woke up.”

“Seeisur”

“Yeah. Seizure.”

“Loooo--?”

“No, not long. 2 Minutes.”

He knows that Tyler won’t remember the conversation. Tyler won’t remember any of this but Josh will. He always does.

“Eeee! Nnnnn-way!”

Josh was about to bend over the couch to fetch a pen and Tyler’s seizure notebook (Tyler was perpetually distrustful of epilepsy apps designed to track seizures so he and Josh reverted to cheap notebooks, tracing Tyler's brain with pen and paper) and Tyler had begun to panic at the movement of his body. Tyler was terrified of being left alone after seizures and whatever it was that registered movement and fear in him was turned up to full volume. He's breathing heavily, eyes darting across the room. He tries to sit up and, like a marionette whose strings have been cut, fails, succumbing to gravity and the gravitas of a broken brain. Josh settles back on the couch.

"Tyler, it's okay..."

He rubs Tyler’s chest in slow circles. Clockwise. “The brain doesn’t feel any pain,” Tyler’s neurologist had assured them, lectured them, but truth be told he wasn’t there when the seizures happened so what the hell does he know. After a few minutes Josh attempts to move for a second time. One leg forward. The other. Controlled movements. Tyler twitches. So much for brains feeling no pain. Seeing Tyler like this gave Josh a whole new perspective on the word _petrified_. Tyler was scared out of his mind.

“I’m not going away, Tyler. I’m just getting your notebook. You can go back to sleep. I won’t leave.”

“Eeeee! N-leeee!”

“I’m right here. Look?” Josh puts his hand on Tyler’s. “Right here.”

“Jishwa---”

“Yes?”

“Ta.”

Whatever it was that made Tyler terrified also made him more open in a way that can only be described as _vulnerable._ Josh knows that Tyler is ashamed, that he loathes the fact that Josh had to see him like this. Josh always responded the same way, “it’s okay” and “you don't have to be embarrassed,” but right in this moment he understands that words are never enough of an answer to the fear Tyler feels. Josh takes Tyler’s hand and squeezes it.

"The two of us. Always.”

It’s kindness.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Describing Josh Dun's hair color has got to be my new favorite thing :D  
> (and transmogrification my favorite word!)
> 
> A note on medical stuff: this is a description of what the postical state after a seizure can look like. (Postictal state is a state of altered consciousness that occurs immediately after the seizure has ended.) After a seizure sleepiness, confusion, disorientation and amnesia are very common but symptoms and their severity really depend on each individual and on the type/length/severity of the seizure. 
> 
> If you want to learn more about epilepsy I recommend http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/epilepsy-101/what-happens-during-seizure
> 
> Thank you for reading! :)


End file.
